This year, the Transworld Haunt Show
was moved to the America's Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Since
this was the first year that the Haunt Show was separate from the
Halloween, Costume & Party show, I wasn't sure how the turnout would
be. I'll have to admit that I was a bit skeptical, but all of my
fears vanished when I walked out on the show floor Friday morning.
Yes, the
show itself was much smaller than it had been in the past (due to the split of the Halloween and Haunt
Shows), but even so, there were still more buyers and vendors on the show floor
than I had anticipated. By Saturday afternoon, the aisles
were packed with buyers. As for the vendors, they really brought
some innovative products this year. Here are just a few of my
personal favorites:

Dark Raven Designs
came to the show with a couple of great animations.
"Zombie Guard Dog" is a chained-up zombie dog with
oozing, torn flesh. When activated, the dog lunges out,
jerking against the chain violently. They also had a
couple of creepy "Vine Creature" animations that would
work well in a swamp or jungle scene.

"Gargoyle
Shock", by Distortions
Unlimited, is a combination animation/costume that will take
your patrons by surprise. As they watch this Gargoyle
animation start to spread its wings, it suddenly springs to life
and the costumed actor lunges out at them. "Zombie
Birth Extreme" is a high-impact, startling animatronic that
features a pregnant woman on a hospital bed. When the
effect is triggered, the zombie baby explosively escapes with
fog, strobe lights and a huge blast of
air.

Gore
Galore introduced the "Creature Cart"
system. Up until now, due to their size, Gore Galore's
large costumes were limited to use as queue line
entertainment. Well, now that has all changed. The
new Creature Cart system allows you to use their
costumes as a 100% actor operated, cart-mounted puppet
system. Regardless of size or strength, any actor can use
the cart system to easily operate one of Gore Galore's huge
costumes with smooth, fluid movements.

Nightmares
Inc., well known for their line of Sinister
Scents, introduced a great new line of costumes. With
a diverse collection of characters including a nurse, mummy and
zombie, these costumes are incredibly detailed and realistic.
The one that really seemed to stand out from the rest was their
stilted Crushorn character.

Nightscream
Studios had a very creative costume call the "Scare
Chair", which is a large creature costume fitted over a
wheelchair. There are two versions of Scare Chairs, the
"Pumpkin" and the "Chomper", which is an
evil-looking creature with red eyes and sharp, bloody
teeth. I also liked their "Wolf Pack", which is
a set of 4 animated wolves with 17 different
movements.

Pale
Night Productions also came to the show with some great
products. The two that seemed to be getting the most
"buzz" on the show floor were the "Drowning
Tank" and the "Asylum Door". The
Drowning Tank is a six foot tall metal tank filled with water.
When triggered, the girl inside begins thrashing around
violently while blowing bubbles from her mouth. The Asylum
Door integrates CGI with an animatronic, to create a truly
unique effect. When triggered, a ghoul is seen coming down
the hallway. She then attempts to break through the glass
before hacking at the door with her axe, which leaves actual
dents in the door.

As
usual, Scarefactory
came to the show with quite an array of animations. The
"Body Snatcher Climber" is a goblin animatronic with
realistic arm and leg movements, to make it appear that it is
climbing up & down a rope. They also had a number of
great vampyre animations. The "Flying Vampyre
Bat" features flapping wings with a 15' wingspan and the
"Leaping Vampyre Bat" springs up from ground-level to
14' high above your audience. The "Trophy Buck
Blaster" is the bloody head of a trophy buck mounted
on the wall. When activated, the rest of the deer's body
jumps through the hole in the wall, thrashing around, as if it
had been skinned alive. Those were just a few of the many
new props they brought to the
show.

You
can see all of the props mentioned above in the picture / video sections
of this overview.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the overview!
Throughout the next several pages you will
find more than 350 pictures taken on the show floor, at the haunt tours
and more! ALL of the pictures taken
on the show floor are labeled with company names, with hyperlinks to their
websites, so you can find out more information about the products &
services that these
companies have to offer. We've also included more than 20 video
clips of some great animations and visual effects that were seen at the
show. So, what do you think? Feel free to send me an emailand let me know what
you thought of the overview.